Titanium's Price Stays Calm, Its Metal Supply Is Extreme
Titanium sponge HHI sits near 4,978, among the highest in this series, even though the element's overall price has stayed comparatively flat.
Titanium’s overall price has stayed comparatively flat, roughly $10.60 to $13.00 across 2020 to 2024, a far calmer trend than lithium’s or nickel’s swings covered on their own economics pages. The metal-stage concentration number tells a different story.
A concentration number the price trend does not reveal
Running the index on titanium sponge production specifically, China roughly 68%, Japan 17%, then Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kazakhstan each in the single digits, gives an HHI of roughly 4,978, among the highest computed anywhere in this series, even though the same calculation on ore mining alone would give a far lower, more moderate number. This is the sharpest ore-versus-metal concentration gap documented in this entire dataset.
Why flat pricing has not reflected this risk
Titanium’s comparatively flat price likely reflects its narrower, aerospace-and-defence-dominated demand base, covered on this material’s application-wise page, a market less exposed to the broad industrial and battery demand swings that move cobalt, nickel, or lithium prices. A flat price here should not be read as low supply chain risk.
Sources: sponge production shares reference this project’s own published production data (USGS); HHI is computed directly from that data; the 2,500 HHI threshold is the US Department of Justice/FTC Horizontal Merger Guidelines convention.